JBS caught red handed again in Brazil

The cattle industry is renowned for being the single biggest cause of deforestation globally and a few years ago, Greenpeace confronted the industry’s practices in Brazil. With your help we achieved a huge victory within months of launching the campaign and it seemed the cattle industry was ready to clean up its act.

But Brazilian company JBS, the world’s biggest meat producer, has failed to stick to its promises and has forced us back into the saddle again.

In 2009, your actions put pressure on shoe companies such as Nike, Timberland and Clarks, which in turn put pressure on their suppliers. The result: an agreement by all the main exporters of beef and leather to no longer buy from cattle farms linked to Amazon deforestation.

Since then, we’ve continued to monitor the companies and unfortunately, our analysis over the past 18 months shows that JBS has failed to fulfil any of its commitments.

We also have new evidence showing that it is buying from farms that deforest illegally and occupy Indigenous lands. When we found similar evidence back in 2009 and presented it to JBS to help the company get a grip of the problem, JBS promised to address the issues but has failed to meet its commitment.

Of course, we know that change doesn’t always happen immediately, so we gave the beef and leather giants two years to implement their agreement.

While there has been some progress, two and a half years later the biggest of the three cattle suppliers, JBS, hasn’t even got off the starting blocks.

On top of this, the Brazilian government has done little to address the problem or even implement existing laws to protect the forest and its people. Despite the Brazilian government’s status as the largest shareholder in JBS with a 30 percent stake in the company, JBS continues to violate labour and environmental legislation.

JBS continues to claim it is committed to protecting the Amazon. But instead of tackling the problem, JBS has moved the goal posts, trying to downgrade its legal requirements instead of making sure it adheres to the Cattle Agreement.

As part of our investigations, we managed to trace the supply of beef linked to Amazon destruction to supermarkets and wholesalers in Europe and Brazil such as Tesco and Pão de Açúcar. We also found that Dutch and Belgian importers and wholesalers such as Makro, Sligro Food Group and Van Aerde were buying Brazilian beef from JBS.

We informed these companies about the environmental crimes committed by their supplier JBS, but some have failed to face up to their responsibilities and stop buying beef from JBS.

It doesn’t have to be this way; we’ve already seen companies ready to stand up and say that they don’t want Amazon destruction in their products. Responsible companies such as Clarks, IKEA, Princes, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Sligro have all made the move already – committing to remove Amazon destruction from their supply chains.

JBS needs to stand up and stop driving Amazon destruction. If it doesn’t, more of its customers will find alternative suppliers and we will continue to expose its role in deforestation!

Okay, we stop eat beef...but don't stop wearing leather...Where is the logic? We have to think about the chain. EVERYTHING from cattle is used, an...

Okay, we stop eat beef...but don't stop wearing leather...Where is the logic? We have to think about the chain. EVERYTHING from cattle is used, and the chain goes beyond shoes, purses, beef, it also involves medication, etc. While we don't check the complete chain we won't able to stop those enterprises.

Humans don't need so much meat. One 100g portion of meat twice a week is enough to satisfy protein needs. Doctors help meat companies and tell the...

Humans don't need so much meat. One 100g portion of meat twice a week is enough to satisfy protein needs. Doctors help meat companies and tell the public that they need more protein. After eating so much protein people go to doctors for pills and surgeries. Well done.

To finish deforestation, animal extinction, social system needs to be changed. Corporations should be guided by the government. Right now governments are guided by corporations like JBS. Current system is defected and has no future.

I'm not advocating for JBS or Brazil, but I am wondering where does Greenpeace get all of its funding from?

Very curious about how ...

I'm not advocating for JBS or Brazil, but I am wondering where does Greenpeace get all of its funding from?

Very curious about how Greenpeace concentrates on discrediting Brazil's beef industry in Europe (with a questionable 'report') while no interest at all has been put on communicating the issue in Brazil's main beef markets (Russia, Middle East, among others).

It is a known issue that European producers have always done whatever is at their extent to halt competitive South American beef imports into Europe...

The energy is the first cause of atmosphere destruction. How many energy is spent to cook a beef everyday in the world? The meat spend much more energ...

The energy is the first cause of atmosphere destruction. How many energy is spent to cook a beef everyday in the world? The meat spend much more energy that vegetables! How many energy the meat industry spend to making the meat a product? How many energy and products of field (hay, grains, soil) for cattle and hens food? How many energy spend cattle and hen heating? And throughout this process how many trees were to cut down and how many vegetables and grains are going out of human food while many people have starve?

And JMachado you are correct to say that by stopping the supply chain there wont be anymore of the cow products. But the thing is what Torsten is saying is that main product that cattles are killed for are beef.

That is the biggest money maker that cattle farmers make money from. Think of it this way, has there been any cow that was killed solely for its hide? No, there hasnt been one. Leather is just the waste from producing beef, since when you slaughter the cow for beef you have the leather.

To stop this, people have to stop buying the beef from these farms. But to do so, Green Peace has to attack the beef industry and that is way too hard for them. Therefore they are attacking the slightly weaker industry, the leather industry. Which in my opinion is stupid because even if tanneries stop buying hides from the Scorecard failed farms. Meat packers will still buy beef from these failed farms, so in reality you are not restricting the market of these "failed" beef but they are just forcing tanneries to waste the hides that are by-produced from the meat industry.

In conclusion, this whole scorecard is not actually helping anyone but making lives harder for some because "failed" farmers will continue to farm for beef (as the beef industry is too hard to change stated before) but throw away the hides in land fills. Tanneries will now lose another supplier as they will be condemned if they try to buy these hides, thus their supply costs will be higher.

P.S. as Jmachado said before, cattles are also used for other things as well. Thus these other industries that rely on the by-products of beef will also be suffering from this whole scorecard fiasco. I lived in brazil for a while, and let me just say something. Beef is part of their culture and tourist culture as well, they wont let something like a scorecard hinder them.